Ten UWCAD students and teacher Rimma Rapoporte organised a morning of multicultural workshops in a Slovenian school last week
On Tuesday 10 April a group of College students went to Koper, in Slovenia, to visit the Italian primary school Pier Paolo Vergerio to hold some multicultural workshops there. The students involved were Amanda (1st year from Brazil), Arein (1st year from Palestine), Lotta (1st year from Finland), Mara (2nd year from Montenegro), Maria (1st year from Georgia), Melos (1st year from Kosovo), Qinyu (2nd year from China), Tamara (1styear from Armenia), Uladislau (2nd year from Belarus) and Yoshi (1st year from Japan).
Our students wore their national costumes or typical clothes from their home countries and proudly carried their national flags. After introducing themselves in the gym the local students, divided into groups, participated in the workshops throughout the morning: Palestinian art and symbols, the symbolism in Belarusian pre-christian culture and the meaning of those symbols in the present day, Chinese calligraphy and the painting of a bamboo with traditional water paint, the interpretation of Finnish and Slovenian cultural symbols as well as traditional dances from Armenia, Brazil, Georgia and Kosovo. At the end of the workshops all the groups met again in the gym and enjoyed a small dance performance. During break the College students were treated to a visit of the high school’s small but remarkable in-house museum: a treasure trove of technical equipment and stuffed birds that were used in the school in the 19th century to teach science and natural history.
Yoshi was “impressed to see how fast the students managed to learn some of the basics of calligraphy, using special brushes, paper and ink. Often even for Japanese students it is extremely difficult to get the sense of how to draw some strokes of Chinese alphabets and, to me, these students were really eager to learn.”
Arein enjoyed getting a lot of questions about Palestine and “It was exciting to see how they would brainstorm and give meanings to something they haven’t seen before and hear their reflections about what they imagine when they hear the name Palestine.”
Maria had a wonderful time and found the cultural exchange opportunity really interesting and enjoyable “I loved working with students and sharing my culture, traditions, language and information about my country. They were really interested and supportive, which really motivated us. Seeing Slovenian students nearly my age learning to dance a Georgian dance in an hour or so was an unforgettable experience for me and I hope for them as well.”
Mara was especially thrilled by the tour of the school museum “the physics teacher’s attention to the artistic value and the artisan skill that went into the creation of the instruments impressed me quite a lot, and catered to two of my major obsessions (physics and art), and their intersection which is engineering. As for the workshops, I think it’s very important for College students to get out of the very specific Duino atmosphere every so often, and be reminded of what an average school experience looks like, so as to avoid taking what we have here for granted. It’s crucial to step out of and understand the privilege of being in a UWC.”
